Emunah As An Epistemological Foundation

The following is an version of a section of an eventually-upcoming book (the one I plan to write after the one I'm currently working on). I'm posting it because of a conversation I'm having elsewhere.

Emunah As An Epistemological Foundation

            There are people who claim that belief in God and Judaism is beyond the rational, beyond evidence and arguments, and is justified by emunah. Not only is belief based on faith justified, they claim, but it is better than belief based on evidence! The Kotzker Rebbe, extolling the virtue of faith over experience, said, “There are tzaddikim who say that they merited seeing the Ushpizin in their sukkah. However, I believe that they come to the sukkah, and belief is even greater than physical sight.”[i] R. Uren Reich, Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshiva of Woodlake Village in Lakewood, articulated the maximalist version of emunah-based epistemology in a speech at the 2004 Agudah Convention when he said, "Anything we see with our eyes is less of a reality than something we see in the Gemara. That’s the emunah that a yid has to have. …every word of Torah is emes, every word of Chazal hakedoshim is emes."[ii]

            The Dictionary of Philosophy and Religion defines "faith" as, "belief which goes beyond the available evidence."[iii] This is the essential problem with emunah as an epistemological foundation. Faith is not evidence, it is belief despite the lack of evidence. Bertrand Russell pointed out that no one talks about faith for things that can be demonstrated. We don't have to resort to faith to believe that two plus two equals four. To appeal to faith is to substitute an emotional attachment to a belief, a desire that a proposition be true, for evidence that it is true. Russell calls faith a vice, because it is an excuse people use for holding unjustified beliefs.[iv]

            The frum person may say that religious faith is different. He knows b'emunah sheleimah that Yiddishkeit is the truth, and this is a different kind of knowing, a surer kind of knowing than the way in which he knows mundane everyday things. As one frum person I spoke with put it, "Emunah is an innate conviction, a perception of truth that transcends, rather than evades, reason." This sounds profound, but I’m not sure that it really means anything at all. How would you evaluate the truth of a precept without using reason, and what does it mean to “transcend” reason? He seems to be suggesting that a feeling in your gut that Judaism is true is a better epistemological foundation than evidence and arguments.

            Christians speak of the same innate conviction about their faith in Jesus, and Hindus say the same thing about their faith in Brahman. How are we to determine who is right? We can't rely on the special knowledge each claims to gain through faith, because we, and each person of faith, have no way of determining whose faith-claim is better. We might think that the knowledge of Judaism we have from our emunah is superior to the faith of other religious people. We may even claim that only faith in Judaism gives real justification for belief, while faith in other religions is foolishness. But the believers in those other religions think the same in regard to their own faith. The Christian can just as easily say that only faith in Christ gives true knowledge, while emunah in Judaism is foolishness. How can we determine who is correct? How can we know that we are right about our faith, and the Christian is wrong about his? Only by reference to something that is available to all of us. We have to check the claims of each religion against the world. We have no choice but to bring evidence for our own beliefs and to point out the flaws in the other religions. At that point, we are not using emunah as an epistemological foundation, we're using evidence and arguments.

            Faith allows the believer not only to hold his cherished belief without evidence, but even in the face of counterevidence. One writer described a friend's refusal to accept that the Bible Codes had been disproven.[v] (The details of how they were disproven will be covered in a later chapter.) His friend insisted that it was a matter of opinion. "No," the writer said, "It isn't a matter of opinion. It's math." "That's your opinion." His friend answered. To preserve his faith-based belief, his friend was willing to claim the equivalent of saying that two plus two equals four is a matter of opinion, and it is equally reasonable to say that two plus two equals fifty-three.

            Faith is useless as a way of determining truth. Faith can be used to justify belief in anything. You question whether there's a God? Have emunah! You don't believe in ghosts? Have faith! You think it's ridiculous when I claim there's a purple alien named Ed following you around who will reward you for doing all my chores? Naaseh v'nishma, do as Ed wants, and we'll worry later about proof! There's nothing that can't be believed with faith as a justification. Faith doesn't provide any way of distinguishing between true and false beliefs. Anything that can be used to justify every belief someone can dream up is useless for justifying any beliefs.

            Appealing to faith is an attempt to bypass the need to justify beliefs. It amounts to a semantic game, one where "unjustified belief" is replaced by "faith." "I have an unjustified belief that God exists," becomes, "I have faith that God exists." Appeals to faith jump over the space where the grounding for belief should be straight to the faithful person's desired conclusion. This is like replacing the word, "playing," with, "winning," and claiming to have won a game as soon as you start to play.[vi] It jumps over the part where you have to actually beat your opponent straight to your desired outcome. You can't win a game by changing the meaning of the word, "win," instead of actually defeating your opponent, and you can't justify a belief by substituting "faith" for real justification.

            There is a distinct advantage to substituting faith for real epistemological justification - an advantage for the religion. If religious people were to insist on solid justification for their religious beliefs, then an absence of such justification would cause them to repudiate those beliefs. This would be disastrous for the religion. If all of its believers behaved this way, the religion would cease to exist. It is much better, from the religion's point of view (if you'll excuse the anthropomorphization of a collection of ideas), to have adherents who will believe in it no matter what. While few people really rest their religious convictions on faith alone, faith, serving to fill the evidential gaps, prevents them from repudiating their religious beliefs. This is why many kiruv books which have the goal of proving the truth of Yiddishkeit with evidence and arguments begin by saying that their purpose is only to strengthen emunah. Even if all of the evidence should prove false, and all of the arguments fail, they say, that wouldn't chas v'shalom mean Yiddishkeit is wrong, and we would still believe b'emunah shelaimah that Judaism is the truth.

            Not only science and academia, but even works from within the tradition that are perceived to challenge the revealed truth are suppressed. R' Slifkin's approach to reconciliation has a long history among Torah scholars, including R' Sasmson Rafael Hirsch. In two letters written to R. Hile Wechsler, R' Hirsch expressed the view that when Chazal made statements about the physical world, they were repeating the best understanding of their era, and not special wisdom derived from the Torah. This is in disagreement with the current Chareidi doctrine that everything in the traditional canon is Divinely revealed truth. Like the science discussed in R' Slifkin's books, the view expressed by R' Hirsch was to be dismissed out of hand and suppressed. A collection of Hirch's writings published in 1992 omitted the two letters, and after the banning of R' Slifkin's books, R' Moshe Shapiro, a leading Chareidi rav, claimed that the letters were forgeries. It is true that the originals of the letters have been lost, but we have originals of the letters R' Wechsler wrote in response to R' Hirsch. It is clear from R' Wechsler's responses that the two letters in question were indeed written by R' Hirsch. What is particularly disturbing is that it's unlikely that R' Shapiro was unaware of R' Wechsler's letters. If so, it seems he chose to lie about the authorship of R' Hirch's letters.[vii]

            With emunah as a epistemological foundation, truth becomes slippery. It is true that R' Hirsch wrote those two letters in the sense that we usually understand truth, as that which is in accord with reality. A man named Samson Hirsch sat down, put pen to paper, and expressed ideas now considered heretical in the Chareidi world. But, like similar truths discovered by science and academia, it is unimportant that it is in accord with experiential reality. Faith is used to justify holding Judaism, in this case, a particular kind of Chareidi Judaism, as the truth, and so anything that contradicts that truth must be false. I think this is where apologists for this sort of thinking get the notion of transcendent or "greater truth." It is true in a mundane sense that R' Hirsch wrote those letters, but it is a "greater truth" that the letters are forgeries, because if they aren't, they are an authoritative source that contradicts what is "known" to be true through emunah. So we have the absurd situation where what is true is called false, and what is false is elevated to the status of a "greater truth."

            This leaves us with no way to meaningfully distinguish between true and false postulates, because the meaning of "true" has been changed from, "that which is in accord with reality," to, "that which is in accord with what I believe." Faith as an epistemic foundation makes belief a tautology. The statement, "I have faith that X is true," translates to, "I have an unjustified belief in X because it is in accord with what I believe." It's an approach to knowledge that begins with conclusions, and has no method for verifying, falsifying, or modifying those conclusions. Essentially, using faith as an epistemological foundation allows people to justify their beliefs on the grounds that those are their beliefs. The whole approach to knowledge hangs in the air, with nothing underneath it. "I believe that God exists," say the faithful, "and it is true that God exists because that is what I believe."

            Beliefs held on faith may be true, but if they are, it's a coincidence. You can't determine the truth of a belief by appealing to faith. Faith is the excuse people use to hold onto a belief they really want to be true despite inadequate or contradictory evidence. By appealing to faith, the faithful are admitting that there is insufficient evidence to support their belief, but they really, really want to believe it anyway. If there was sufficient evidence, they wouldn't appeal to faith.[viii] To use faith as an epistemological foundation is to irrationally hold that one may adopt any belief at all with no need for justification. Without sufficient evidence to justify a belief, the rational approach is to disbelieve, not to jump over the gap in the evidence with an appeal to faith.[ix] To paraphrase Socrates, the unexamined belief is not worth holding.

            What's especially frustrating about appeals to faith is that for anything other than religion, even the faithful readily agree that unexamined beliefs are not worth holding. No one would appeal to faith to justify trusting a potential business partner instead of researching his record. No one would drive a car that had never been tested and rely on the manufacturer's exhortations to have faith that the car was safe. Everyone would agree that doing so would be foolish and naive, even dangerous.

            Most people don't really use faith to justify their religious beliefs, either. It's a fall-back they use when they can't defend their beliefs rationally. People have reasons and justifications for their beliefs. They rest their beliefs on things like the Argument from Design, the Anthropic Principle, the Kuzari Proof, the Argument from Jewish History, and so on. Even if they don't know the names of the arguments, even if all they know is a half-remembered snippet of a hashkafa class, people try to justify their religious beliefs the same way they justify all their other beliefs. It's only after their justifications are defeated that people appeal to faith.

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[i] Oros Hamoadim, p. 80

[ii] Reich, U. (2004). Address at the Melava Malka of Agudath Israel of America's 82nd National Convention. Retrieved from http://www.zootorah.com/controversy/ravreich.pdf

[iii] Reese, W.L., (1980). Dictionary of Philosophy and Religion: Eastern and Western Thought. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press. p. 166; via Loftus, J.W. (2013). The Outsider Test for Faith. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. p.213

[iv] Loftus, J.W. (2013). The Outsider Test for Faith. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. p.213

[v] Michaelson, J. (2012, May 31). Bible Codes a Lie That Won’t Die. Forward. Retrieved from https://forward.com/culture/157033/bible-codes-a-lie-that-won-t-die/

[vi] Scriven, M. God and Reason; in Angeles, P. (1976). Critiques of God. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books. P. 101

[vii] Shapiro, M.B. (2015). Changing the Immutable: How Orthodox Judaism Rewrites Its History. Portland, OR: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization P. 129-131

[viii] Loftus, J.W. (2013). The Outsider Test for Faith. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. p.212

[ix] Scriven, NI. God and Reason; in Angeles, P. (1976). Critiques of God. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books. P. 106